5 Key Takeaways from Activate 2025
Imagine a room filled with the best and brightest cyber insurance has to offer.
Visionaries who helped shape our industry into its current form. Luminaries who conceive of an unimaginable future. Experts across insurance, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, public policy, and so much more — all in one place, sharing ideas and building the future of cyber insurance.
Activate 2025, Coalition’s first-ever broker conference in New York City, lived up to its name and then some. It was inspiring to see so many people eager to enhance their own cyber expertise and invested in our mission to protect the unprotected.
If you weren’t able to join us this year (or even if you were there and just need a refresher), here are the 5 key takeaways from Activate 2025.
1. Active Insurance is driving the cyber insurance industry forward with innovation and expertise
Traditional cyber insurance and Active Insurance are two entirely different categories — and the world is taking notice. Coalition’s industry-defining category has been embraced widely across the market, while also inspiring others to follow our lead.
As our Co-founder and CEO Joshua Motta shared, “The sincerest form of flattery is when people start to imitate you.” But make no mistake, there’s no substitute for Active Insurance.
In 2024, Coalition achieved a claims frequency that’s 73% lower than the industry average.* This means that when your clients purchase cyber insurance from Coalition, they’re objectively less likely to experience a loss than if they’d purchased it elsewhere.
This achievement doesn’t happen overnight, nor does it happen by chance.
In 2024, Coalition achieved a claims frequency that’s 73% lower than the industry average.
In fact, Coalition’s approach to cyber risk can be traced all the way back to Joshua’s founding blog post in 2017 — “our (not so) secret master plan” — in which he laid out a simple-yet-prescient playbooks of how Coalition planned to sell a comprehensive cyber insurance product, invest the profits in a security platform for policyholders, and leverage all of the data we capture to build better insurance products, tools, technology, and intelligence.
In the years since, we’ve stayed true to this plan while becoming the largest writer of cyber insurance in North America by gross written premium. And we’re only getting started.
2. Coalition’s new Active Cyber Policy sets the standard for market-leading coverage
As a cyber insurance provider, the most critical product Coalition offers is the policy. An effective cyber insurance policy must be able to respond to the evolving risks of today and tomorrow.
“We have to have coverage that solves for the cutting-edge risks of today. You’d only expect that the company that has the great ability to mitigate risk would also provide the greatest policy to meet the needs of your clients.” — Shawn Ram, Chief Revenue Officer, Coalition
Coalition’s new Active Cyber Policy does exactly that, setting the standard for market-leading coverage with expanded protection against emerging digital threats.** Marquee coverage highlights include:
Vanishing retention: With each claim-free year, the policy retention is discounted ultimately to zero when policyholders resolve critical vulnerabilities in Coalition Control®. This new coverage encourages and rewards businesses' active participation in their cyber risk management.
Reduced FTF retention: When policyholders report fraudulent transfers within 72 hours of the initial transfer, the retention for Funds Transfer Fraud (FTF) coverage is lowered. This new coverage encourages timely reporting to maximize the likelihood of a successful recovery.
Any One Claim coverage: The policy limit resets for each separate incident that occurs during the policy period. This coverage enhancement helps ensure policyholders maintain maximum protection regardless of prior incidents.
“We have to have coverage that solves for the cutting-edge risks of today,” noted Shawn Ram, Chief Revenue Officer. “You’d only expect that the company that has the great ability to mitigate risk would also provide the greatest policy to meet the needs of your clients.”
3. Businesses that understand and proactively address cyber risk will be the ones that thrive
We know that cyber risk is a top priority for businesses in 2025 — even more so for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that routinely say their current cyber capabilities are inadequate. By introducing security solutions to cyber quotes, Coalition has made it even easier for you to position yourself as a knowledgeable risk advisor to your clients and seamlessly help businesses adopt meaningful cybersecurity technologies.
But that’s not all! Because Coalition has a vested interest in helping policyholders minimize losses through the adoption of security controls, we’re rewarding their smart security investments.
Coalition Managed Detection & Response: Businesses in the US and Canada (excluding Quebec) that purchase Coalition MDR on a standalone basis, or a security package that includes Coalition MDR, are eligible for up to 12.5% premium credit on cyber insurance policies offered by Coalition.***
Coalition Security Awareness Training: Coalition policyholders can also maximize coverage with up to a $50,000 increase to their Funds Transfer Fraud sublimit when they purchase Coalition Security Awareness Training or a security package that includes awareness training.****
Coalition believes that effective security controls and risk transfer go hand in hand, which is why we’re empowering you with security solutions that help your clients maximize coverage and minimize risk.
Coalition has made it even easier for you to position yourself as a knowledgeable risk advisor to your clients and seamlessly help businesses adopt meaningful cybersecurity technologies.
4. Claims and incident response teams play an active role in reducing the likelihood and cost of cyber attacks
Claims handlers and incident responders are often misconstrued as the ones who come in and clean up after the damage has been done.But with Active Insurance, these vital teams are integral to the well-being of Coalition policyholders, not only helping businesses recover after an incident but also helping them actively reducing the frequency and severity of attacks.
“When prevention fails, expert response and timely mitigation are what can keep a cyber incident from turning into a business-ending event,” noted Chris Hendricks, Head of Coalition Incident Response (CIR).
In 2024, the average loss in a ransomware event was $292,000. Among those incidents, the average ransom demand was $1.1 million, yet CIR directly engaged threat actors and, on average, successfully negotiated a 60% reduction in payment.
“When prevention fails, expert response and timely mitigation are what can keep a cyber incident from turning into a business-ending event." — Chris Hendricks, Head of Coalition Incident Response
It’s not just ransomware, either. Funds transfer fraud (FTF) accounted for 30% of all Coalition claims in 2024, and our differentiated approach to clawing back stolen money on policyholders’ behalf put $31 million directly back into their pockets.
“Traditional insurance approaches funds transfer fraud by sending a blank proof of loss form, spending a month or two investigating, and sending a check several months later,” said Anne Juntunen, Senior Claims Manager at Coalition. “But the better approach is to try to freeze the funds before they leave the country.”
5. With the right tools and partner, every broker can become a cyber savvy risk advisor
Cyber threats continue to accelerate year over year, and this isn’t changing anytime soon. The speed at which new threats develop, alongside the relentlessness of threat actors, makes assessing cyber risk at the time of underwriting and protecting businesses throughout the policy period different from other insurable risks.
Coalition continues to make major investments and improvements to underwriting, risk selection, and pricing decisions. We also announced the launch of the Risky Tech Ranking, a list of technology providers whose products were vulnerable to exploitation by threat actors. Using publicly available data, the ranking is a way to help businesses make better-informed decisions about the technologies they adopt.
We frequently encounter technology products and services that, in our opinion, fail to adequately safeguard businesses. Our commitment to help protect all businesses from evolving cyber risk is what inspired the ranking, and we hope it serves as a valuable resource to our broker partners, as well.
Looking to the future, we know that businesses will continue to look to their brokers for guidance. Our job is to make your life easier and ensure that you have access to the best tools and expertise to advise your clients.
Relive the experience of Activate 2025
Activate 2025 may have passed, but you can still experience the entire conference with on-demand recordings of keynote presenters, guest speakers, breakout sessions, and more.
Plus, you can save your spot at Activate 2026 and sign up for news about what’s in store for next year.
Click here to relive the magic of Activate 2025
